1300 - 1600: THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO

*Please, press play on the track above to enjoy the music believed to be enjoyed during this time period. 

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Marco Polo’s name has captivated people for generations and is synonymous with adventure, conquest, exploration, and new trade. The original book about Marco Polo has gone by many enchanting names like Book of the Marvels of the World, Description of the World, The Travels of Marco Polo, and many more. The reason for the many titles is because the life of Marco Polo has been translated into 150 different version, however the original manuscripts are actually lost to us in the modern age. These texts, despite each translation being slightly different, gives the reader an opportunity to see the way the world was viewed by one of the most notorious world travelers. Keeping in mind, that when Marco Polo’s work was published it brought the world to people’s finger tips for the first time in the history of the world. The words were not the Italian explorers owns, he had a man Rustichello da Pisa write down the stories from his 20 yearlong Asian travels ending around 1295.

The book itself is divided up into four different section that go into detailed travel accounts of Marco Polo’s travels. The first is of his travels to the Middle East and Central Asia, the second is of his time in china and being in court with the notorious Kublai Khan. The third, writes about the different Eastern costal places like India, Japan, coast of Africa, Sri Lanka, and parts of Southeast Asia. The final book in the collection is of Marco Polo’s journey was war filled book on the Mongols, cannibalism, and spice growers all the way in the North. These books are important to note that their ability to convey the vastness of the world to people made them very popular even in an era before a printing press. These books weren’t  just a fascinating account of the most interesting man of the time, it also was used to progress the scholarly knowledge of how the world was laid out. Polo’s exploration and Pisa’s writing shapes how cartography advanced. It is said Marco Polo’s exploration influenced Christopher Columbus’s and Polo’s books were held dear to Columbus and remained in his private collection (The Authentic, 1895 p.115).

This book was so impactful to people because it was entertaining, dramatic, educational, influential, and heroic; everything a modern novel could aspire to me. This text shows how on one piece of literature changed the course of cartography and encourages the birth of our own home, America. These books illustrate how influential literature is to us as humankind both at a micro and macro level. Every person that read these books felt personally inspired but the quest for adventure and new worlds. Subsequently, the world became more eager to explore and learn about new cultures. Words on a paper influenced people to find new worlds and to experience new culture, this is the epitome of the power of the modern novel.